Growing Up On The Road: A Love Story of Music Gypsies
by Burntsugrr
Summary: A follow up to the Issey's Road Series, this book is a memoir of sorts written by Issey and Darren's eldest daughter.
1. Chapter 1

Growing Up On The Road: A Love Story of Music Gypsies

By Bellatrix "Tonks"Criss

Foreword

I'd like to thank my parents, Isabelle and Darren Criss for the weird and wild childhood that made me who I am today.

This book is a true collaboration full of stories shared with me by my family and friends as well as memories of my own.

If you are unaware of my parents celebrity I'd like to buy you a drink sometime and talk about what growing up Amish was like.

I'll give you the short version. Mom was a celebrated vocal coach and show coordinator for some (most) of the biggest names in the business. Dad was a world famous actor and musician. They met when Mom had a fully established career and Dad was starting out on a TV show about kids in a Glee Club, before he became Mr. Leading Man.

My siblings and I grew up in a weird world of tour buses and movie sets.

They have memories that directly contradict some of mine, but if they want to set the record straight as they see it they can write their own damn books. (Love you guys!)

Chapter 1

We might as well get the whole thing about my name out of the way right up front.

As far back as I can remember my family, and their friends, called me Tonks, my Grandparents on both sides called me Ella which I thought was an endearment like "Sweetie" or "Honey". I didn't know my name wasn't actually Tonks until my first day of school.

"Bellatrix Criss...Bellatrix?" The teacher called out the weird name but no one raised their hand or said "Here." as we'd been instructed. I remember thinking that if my name was Bellatrix I probably wouldn't raise my hand either.

Marsh, my twin brother, raised his hand when his name was called and I listened closely waiting for my turn. When all of the names were called but my own a I raised my hand.

"Yes?"

"You skipped me."

"And you are?"

"Tonks."

"Tonks..." The teacher checked her list, looking for anything Tonks could possibly be short for I assume. Coming up empty.

"What's your full name?"

"Tonks."

Marshall raised his hand, "That's my sister. Grammy calls her Ella. Is there an Ella?"

Recognition crossed the teachers face. "Harry Potter fans shouldn't be allowed to name children." She murmured.

"I did call your name. You are Bellatrix. Tonks is just a nickname."

A little red head spoke without raising her hand, "What's a nickname?"

That night at dinner I waited until Mom and Dad were settled in and turned to ask us how our first day of school was.

"Why didn't you tell me my real name?" I asked, very seriously. I was upset with them and wanted them to know I was onto their lie.

"What're you talking about, you know your name." My mother said as she took a squished pea from my 2 year old sister's fingers and replaced it with a baby sized spoon.

"My name is Tonks but the teacher said it's Fellasticks."

"Bellatrix." Dad corrected, then looked at Mom, I'm not sure we've ever actually told her that."

"How could she not know? She's heard us introduce her to people."

They didn't often talk as if we weren't right there, but that night they did.

Dad explained. "We named you Bellatrix after a star in the sky that is named after a warrior girl."

I liked the star part but the second part confused me. "What's a warrior?"

"Someone strong and in charge." Dad said between bites of quinoa.

"That's you all right." Marshall interrupted. My brother was always more of a "go along and keep the peace" kind of kid. He's still that way as an adult. He never understood my foot stomping, demanding ways but somehow always reaped the benefits of my demands, when they were met, which was only occasionally and usually by Dad or Uncle Joey. Mom was a much more difficult sell. You had to lay out reasons and justifications for Mom. For Dad it was enough that something would make me happy and was unlikely to do any permanent damage.

Marshall had a higher success rate because he asked for much less. It didn't take long for me to recognize and try to exploit this. Unfortunately for me Marsh is not easily persuaded to be a bother.

I digress ( get used to that, Mom's a linear thinker, Dad and I are...not.)

"Then why does everyone call me Tonks?"

"It's from a movie, one of our favorites. Tonks was a girl who was magical and could change her appearance to be any kind of animal she wanted."

I protested that I couldn't do that so the name didn't make sense. They said it made sense to them and someday soon they'd show us the movies so it would make sense to me too.

It was an unsatisfactory answer but what can you do? You can bug them relentlessly until one night the entire family (minus tiny Alex ) sits down to watch the movie. Marsh and I sat on the floor, Mom and Dad curled up together in the sofa and Uncle Joey on a chair. Uncle Joey must have told us a million times how great this was going to be.

Only Tonks wasn't in the movie. It was an excellent movie, don't get me wrong, though it was hard to concentrate with all of the adults singing songs and telling jokes Marsh and I didn't get about it.

I did eventually see all of the Harry Potter movies and became livid that I had the name (Bellatrix) of such an evil character but Dad insisted I was named for the star and not the character. I did like Tonks though, she was funny and cool.

When everyone at school thinks your name is Bellatrix you get a lot if Bell, Bella and later, Trixie. Trixie was my favorite until junior high when it was twisted to something more unsavory by mean girls and boys who got wind of prostitutes "turning tricks" but by then I was quite capable of telling anyone and everyone to go fuck themselves.

So Tonks I was and Tonks I remain.


	2. Twice As Nice

Twice As Nice

Marsh and I have heard the story about the time surrounding our birth so many times we could tell it in the way most kids could sing Row Row Row Your Boat in rounds.

Mom had cancer, a fact she discovered pretty much the same time she found out she was pregnant with us. She had a double mastectomy while pregnant and went through treatment but it wasn't enough.

Dad was doing his first Broadway show so they were in New York and as Mom got sicker they wanted to take Marsh and I but Mom wanted to hold out until January. Her body had other ideas and eventually she had no say. Dad was afraid he'd lose all of us so he gave the go ahead and we were born on Christmas Eve.

Mom got to see us, and hold us the day we were born but not again until we were almost three months old.

She had an infection and had no immunity left to fight it, the cancer was progressing and Dad was convinced he would lose her. He still can't say this without his eyes going red and his voice catching in his throat. All these years later he still feels the fear.

Dad had to come home to LA to work on Glee but they wouldn't let mom travel. We were okay to be released so we moved home without our mother.

Dad hired a nanny, flying back to New York to spend every possible moment with Mom. Nana Criss and Uncle Joey were always right around a corner telling the nanny how we liked things and how they thought things needed to be done so she quit pretty quickly. It didn't matter, we always had loving adults around when we were home. With Aunts Mia, Lucy and Sophie, Uncles Joey, Chuck and Chris, both sets of grandparents, we were like a village of our own.

Eventually they let mom come back to LA to stay in the hospital here. It was a huge relief to Dad. She was here a week before they let him bring us to the hospital so she could see us.

Dad said she'd been desolate at being away from us and when he brought us in she'd cried at how big we'd gotten without her. She'd told Dad we didn't need her but Daddy had kissed her and told her that we all needed her, himself included.

It was true. We may not have known she wasn't there but when she was at long last allowed to come home everyone says we cried and fussed far less. Maybe we sensed that Dad was finally relaxing and everything would be okay.

Mom was home but she was weak and very ill. They had to put a hospital bed in the living room because she couldn't climb the stairs, the hospital wouldn't let her home until Dad could prove he'd done it but she never got in it. Once she got cleared to come home they hid it away in the alcove and she would lounge on the sofa in front of the fish tank during the day and Dad would carry her upstairs to their bed at night.

She wanted us near her constantly, wanted to make up the time she'd lost. We were too small to notice but she felt awful about everything she missed.

She was still having radiation therapy which made her even more weak. Uncle Joey came in once to find her half way through changing Marsh's diaper and sobbing. She'd taken the old diaper off and started wiping him clean but her arms were so sore and she was so exhausted she hadn't been able to react quickly enough when Marsh thrashed and fell off the sofa to the floor.

It was an 8 inch fall, he'd wailed out of surprise but was fine. Mom was convinced she was a failure as a mother. Uncle Joey soothed Marsh, put on a new diaper and set him in mom's arms.

He told her he'd seen Dad let me topple from the actual changing table. It was a three foot drop and I'd screamed so long Dad took me to the emergency room. I'd bent a finger out of joint. Dad yelled louder than I did when they put it back in.

Mom got the point and relaxed.

Uncle Joey isn't really our uncle He and Dad went to college together and were best buds. They won't cop to it but watching some of the shows they wrote together back then I still think they smoked a shit ton of weed.

Anyway Uncle Joey was our Mary Poppins. He was silly, fun, and on our side but somehow the sneaky bastard always got us to do the right thing. Joey's my Godfather. He, Dad and I are like an unholy trinity of bad asses. They had me on a surfboard before I could walk. If I wanted to swing on something Dad or Joey did it first to test it's tensile strength. If it would hold me I could swing on it. There was never a question of whether I was capable of swinging from it.

For the record I was frequently NOT capable and landed on my ass but they taught me how to do that well too.

We climbed trees, jumped off stuff and once even built a tightrope walk from the balcony of my parents bedroom balcony to the roof of the gazebo.

Mom was on tour at the time, Dad stood below ready to catch me if I fell and Uncle Joey had a rope around my waist by which he planned to slow my fall ( it probably would have sent me careening into the wall if I'd fallen).

We'd practiced of course, starting only a few inches off the ground then a few feet until I could balance perfectly.

It took only 3 days of begging for a REAL tightrope and they caved.

I didn't fall. I did walks and dips and turns and was so temped to try a walkover or back bend but I knew If I fell I'd break an arm or leg and not be able to surf for months.

Speaking of Uncle's who aren't, there's Marsh's Godfather, Uncle Chris. If Joey was our Mary Poppins, Chris was our Fairy Godmother. He'd love that description.

He was in the same show as Dad, they played high school sweethearts who grow up and get married. If you don't count Dad, he's Mom's best friend.

She was the Matron of Honor at his and Uncle Will's wedding, I was the flower girl and Marsh was ring bearer.

The wedding was a fairy tale come to life. I thought my Mom was magically changed into a Princess she looked so beautiful. I loved my dress and twirled endlessly for anyone who would indulge me with their attention.

When I was little and looked at the pictures from that day I always looked for myself, my long dark hair in banana curls, the sparkly shoes Uncle Will had helped me pick out, how pretty I hoped I looked. I didn't look like Mommy, not at all, and she looked so beautiful in her dress, I would stare at her, then myself and try to decide if I could someday be that pretty.

When I was a teenager I was babysitting Leia, Chris and Will's daughter. We were looking for some old games and came across a book of photos from their wedding. We sorted through them, Leia wanting to know who everyone was and why. She was at the Why stage.

This time I examined the faces of the adults. It was then I knew what I wanted in a boyfriend, a husband, the person I would spend my life with. I wanted to be looked at the way my father looked at my mother when she wasn't looking back, and I wanted someone I would look at the way my mother looked at Dad when he wasn't looking back.

I realized its easy to show a connection to someone whose gaze you share in a photo, but when you can feel the love radiating out from one person so unmistakably toward another and that other person is completely unaware, that is love you can count on.

I also realized that Chris and Will had designed a wedding that was impressively childlike even to an adult.

Uncle Chris understood the magical realm of childhood. Again most of you will be aware of this but he wrote the books that launched The Land of Stories movies and eventually, theme parks.

He loved dressing up and getting lost in fantasy lands of our own imaginations. He also took game play very seriously. Candyland was cut throat when he was involved.

I don't have to tell you that no one has ever been happy to have their birthday on Christmas Eve. Jesus kinda put that on lock. Mom and Dad always went out of their to make it very special and very separate from Christmas but still it was tough to find a time that kids could come to parties and the like.

When we were 7 Uncle Chris had had enough of it. He said it was a total tragedy that we got stuck with the birthday we did.

He said he remembered the day Mom found out about us and we should celebrate that as our PreRelease Date. Every year he and Will would throw Marsh and I an elaborate party on that day, mid summer.

So Marsh and I, a pair born together had a double home coming of sorts, first with Dad and then again when Mom joined us.

We had 2 Godfathers who adored us, spoiled us, supported and were always there for us.

We had two birthdays of sorts and we had two lives, a life at home, and a life on the road.


	3. Chapter 3

When we were little Marsh and I spent most of our time at home or in the hospital visiting Mom.

As I mentioned Mom had cancer, originally limited to breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy while she was pregnant with us but because of us she couldn't get all of the treatments she needed. The cancer spread to her chest wall and was almost certainly going to involve her lungs without aggressive treatment.

We didn't know other kids had Moms who weren't at the hospital for months on end or weren't periodically bald. She was just Mom.

Probably because of the time she couldn't spend with us, or maybe because she feared her time was running short overall, she never let feeling sick or tired be an excuse for being uninvolved.

If she was in the hospital we would spend entire days there, in her room with her, watching movies, her reading to us or playing board and card games.

Sometimes we'd have sleepovers and sleep in sleeping bags on the floor. The nurses would have to step over our sleeping bodies and strewn about toys but Mom would just have something delicious and decadent sent to the nurses station by way of a thank you.

Mealtime at the hospital was incredibly exciting for us. We liked the hospital food in its neat compartments. Dropping whatever we had been doing immediately when we heard the large silver cart of trays with its squeaky wheels. We would hop onto Mom's bed and wait for the tray to be placed on the tall table with wheels.

I never understood, as a child and even now, why these tables are not available for home use. The convenience of a table, on wheels, that can be adjusted to whatever height you need and slid over chairs or beds is undeniable.

When the nurse left the room my brother and I would descend onto the tray like vultures. I liked to peel the foil tops from the containers of juice, jello and sometimes, though rarely, pudding.

Marshall liked the little packets of creamer they'd sometimes send as a mistake. He would take them and roll them like makeshift toy cars on the floor.

Sometimes when Mom was healthy enough for looking good, which always meant she was close to coming home, a woman would stop by her room with various wigs and cases filled with little pots of candy colored make up and soft brushes. These were my favorite days at the hospital. The woman was big and friendly. She would talk Mom into trying on a wig or two then indulge me in a dress up party.

I would put on wigs that looked most like Mom's hair when she had it, then sit very still while I had a full face of bright and sparkly make up applied to my cheeks, eyes and lips. Sometimes Mom would let her paint her nails, fingers and toes and without even asking she'd always do mine in the exact same color. This is one of the rare times when I was little that I would be told I was just like my mother. I tucked those moments away in my memory because a small part of me always wondered if perhaps there was some mistake. If maybe I was my father's daughter and Marsh was my mother's son but not the other way around.

This is not to say she didn't act like a mother to me, she always did , it was me who doubted I could be related to this rare and infinitely interesting creature. She appeared so delicate then, like the vases and knickknacks at Dad's boss Ryan's house that he warned us never to play around. Ryan never cared, he'd have broken any or all of them himself just to make us laugh, but Dad still made an unusually stern face when we wandered near one.

As I got older, as you will see, I gained an appreciation for how strong my mother is both physically and emotionally , and how much more like her I am than I ever guessed.

When we were home and Mom was in recuperation mode Dad would make snow cones and we'd all camp out in the living room. Every time he made snow cones he would give Mom the same playful look and say, "See? I was right."

Mom would tell him affectionately that even a stopped clock was right twice a day and Dad would just shake his head and hand out the treats.

Dad would tell scary stories that made Marsh and I shrink deeper into our sleeping bags and Mom would giggle like one of us, telling him to stop. She never meant it though, we knew that even then.

The best part of the living room camp out was Mom and Dad telling us stories about before we were born and the crazy adventures they'd had.

Mom had a streak of not going into the hospital for a long time. My parents threw an enormous party. We always had lots of people around but this was a bonafide blow out. Dad said the party was for Mom and I asked if it was her birthday. He said in a way it was, the cancer was gone and although it could come back we were going to be able to go back to having a normal life.

Mom's cancer was my normal life and the healthier she got the less normal out lives became, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

This party was for the grown ups, Marsh and I were allowed to stay for the first hour and then were sent up to bed. We went upstairs but immediately snuck onto the balcony of my parents bedroom. From here we could observe the adults when they were not on their best "children are present" behavior.

There were jokes we didn't understand and words we would have been punished for using. Drinking seemed to be the main goal of the party and as the night wore on we watched people pair up and get closer, touching each other in dark corners, not always in combinations you would expect.

I tried to get Marsh to watch two women having a spat by the hot tub but he was mesmerized by something down the beach. When I finally followed his gaze and my eyes adjusted to the darkness away from the house I realized it was Mom and Uncle Chris, sitting close together in the sand, her head on his shoulder.

"He kissed her." Marsh said quietly.

"He always kisses her." I want back to looking for more interesting behavior.

"On the mouth."

"Like Dad?"

"Like Dad when he's in a hurry."

This meant a quick peck on the lips. Marsh seemed troubled but I had seen it before, no big deal.

I forgot that moment until I was 20 and learned that Mom and Uncle Chris had been more than friends and there had been some chance that he might have been our father.

When she told me this, she was visiting me at college and listening to me lament my broken heart over a boy I'd fallen in love with who had fallen in love with a boy of his own.

I was flabbergasted, Dad and Uncle Chris had never shown the slightest negative energy between them. Dad never blinked an eye when Uncle Chris and Mom would spend weekends away, just the two of them, to shop or write or do whatever it was they did.

I asked her if anything happened between them after she'd married my father, feeling extremely protective over the man who had cherished her every second of our lives.

"God no!" She'd laughed at the idea, "That was all behind us, maybe you'll get there with Josh someday. It's a very strong friendship, those don't come by very often. Like your Dad and Aunt Mia."

I answered that it was different, that they didn't have a romantic history, and Mom cleared that up quick too. Turns out Dad and Aunt Mia had been an item when he met my mom.

You never really think of the people in your parents lives as potential ex lovers and at first it disturbed me, it felt like a betrayal, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that my extended family was able to keep the love and remove the jealousy. It was a beautiful and valuable lesson.

In third grade I went to a friends house for my first sleep over. My friend Cathy's mother order pizza with the help of the maid and we played with our dolls under the watchful eye of her nanny.

It was a fun time. When we were told to go to bed we climbed together into her four poster twin complete with sunshine yellow canopy and giggled about the things girls that age find funny.

We drifted off to sleep but I woke to the sounds of yelling. Cathy slept through them at first but I woke her, terrified of the noise.

"That's just my parents." She'd said sleepily then turned over.

I tried to go back to sleep but the shouting got louder as they climbed the stairs. She called him an asshole, he called her a cunt. I began to cry.

I was certain someone was about to be murdered. When Cathy refused to grasped the gravity of the situation I called my Dad's phone. He was just leaving a show, I could tell by the now familiar sounds of a stage being disassembled, the band packing away their things.

"Come get me!" I wailed into the phone. I was perched in Cathy's private bath, hiding in the tub.

"It's your first sleepover, you're just nervous." Dad tried.

"No, there's a big fight, someone's gonna shoot someone. Listen." I climbed out of the tub and held the phone out the door so he could hear the commotion.

"Get your things, I'll be there in 20 minutes."

The fact that Dad, usually so calm, agreed enough with my assessment of the situation to come get me scared me further. I was shaking and tripping over myself to gather my things in the dark, unfamiliar room.

I knocked over a display of Cathy's dolls and her mother came to the door.

"What are you doing up?"

"My dad's coming to get me." I said through tears. I wanted her to know another grown up would be here soon so maybe the fighting would stop.

She asked what was wrong and not wanting to let her know I had heard the fighting I parroted my fathers words. "I've never slept over before, I think I'm just nervous but Dad said I could come home. He's already on his way. I can wait outside if you want."

I couldn't wait to get away but she tried to cajole me into staying. Cathy wasn't interested. Once she was sleeping she was done.

When it became obvious I was not going to change my mind she walked me downstairs to wait with me.

Dad got there after several lifetimes of waiting. He put his hand on the top of my head and gave Cathy's mom his winning smile. "Sorry about this, it's her first sleepover." He shrugged in a 'kids huh?' sort of way.

After a show my dad always looked like he was coming home from war. He'd be drenched in sweat and his hair would be even more out of control than usual. His eyes would be slightly wild with the excitement of the music and the crowd. He looked vaguely like a wild animal that might swallow you whole if you stood still long enough.

I was used to it and found it funny. Standing in the doorway between an impending murder and freedom however I was extremely glad Dad looked a little wild. Perhaps he looked crazy enough to put a little scare in them and they would let us move along quickly.

"Oh, I know, maybe they're just too young yet. Why don't you come in for a drink?"

Oh no.

I knew of course, of my fathers affect on women. Nearly everywhere we went they would crowd around and take pictures of him, and all of us. They would coo over how cute us kids were but mostly they wanted to hug him and tell him they loved him.

It was tedious when we were little and infuriating as we got older.

I hadn't expected somebody's MOM to fall under his spell, particularly when he was all rumpled and messy, his beard unkept.

Now of course I understand, but then I wanted to shout at her, but I was too afraid and so I tugged at the edge of his t shirt and gave him a pleading look.

He told her another time and we left.

In the car on the way home I animatedly shared the fight I'd overheard from the backseat.

"Oh Tonk's that's just grown ups, sometimes we fight, and it can seem scary but it happens."

"You and Mommy don't."

"We used to, now and then. Think of you and your brother and sister. You yell and fight but you love each other."

"You and Mom used to fight?" This idea scared me more than the fight I'd just witnessed. I couldn't imagine my father, who looked at my mother with a devotion so true it sometimes made me feel as if I were watching something too intimate for my own eyes yelling the things I'd heard.

Or my mother, who rarely raised her voice even when Alex was climbing a chair by the stove, heading for certain peril.

They were, as I expected all marrieds to be, in love. They touched at every opportunity, held hands in the car, kissed each other frequently. If they disagreed they would merely present their individual points until one or the other agreed to consent.

"Not with yelling and bad words." I'd stated, sure he'd misunderstood the gravity of Cathy's parents ordeal.

"Not often, but sure, yeah, we did."

"Well don't do it again ."

I needn't have worried. My parents fights, like their past romances, were behind them.


	4. Chapter 4 Sex Ed

When I was 8 we all went on location with Dad while he made his third, and as it turned out, breakout movie, "Grape Lucidity."

A major portion of the movie was shot in Italy and so we moved there for 3 months.

Dad spoke fluently, Alex picked it up well enough. Mom, Marsh and I spent a lot of time speaking slowly and loudly in baby English.

Despite my difficulty with the language I loved Italy. Mom was healthy and pregnant, Dad was tan and sounded so smart speaking to the locals.

The actress playing my father's love interest had her three children with her, all girls, Caroline was 12 and I followed her everywhere because she always had the best ideas for things to do. Jessie was 7, truly only months younger than me but I deemed her too babyish to play with. Mabel was 5 and the perfect playmate for Alex, effectively keeping her out of my hair.

On the nights they weren't shooting all of the adults and their children would come to our rented home. We'd have pot luck meals or else a few of them would decide to cook for the group with everyone buzzing in and out of the large country kitchen.

I remember one evening, Mom and a few other women were cooking for the group. In that magic time of day when the sun knows it should be going to bed but it keeps holding out just a few minutes more.

The ladies had the windows and kitchen door open but it was still hot thanks to the oven being on.

All of the men and some of the women were outside on the patio where we would eat. Alex was playing with Mabel under her mother's watchful eye. Marsh was, as usual, in the far corner of the yard in a dirt pile pushing bright yellow dump trucks around.

I was helping with dinner because Caroline had wanted to. She liked to do the things the grown ups were doing.

Mom was cutting potatoes, barefoot, looking like a fifties housewife. She was joking with the other women when Dad came in and slipped his arms around her from behind. He patted her belly and kissed her neck, not caring who was looking. He asked if he could help, said he missed her after shooting all day.

Mom laughed and leaned into his subsequent kiss on the cheek but then shoo'd him out of the kitchen. When he'd gone the other women told her how lucky she was.

"My husband wouldn't come looking for me if I was missing for a week."

"How long have you two been married? My Stewart hasn't acted like that since we were newlyweds."

And so on. Mom told the others that they felt like newlyweds because she'd been sick before they got married and sick for such a large part of their marriage they were just now settling in to getting to enjoy each other without fear.

That night after dinner everyone came inside because the bugs became too abundant outside to ignore.

We kids were set about to lie down on various blankets and things in the tv room because it was our bedtime, except for Caroline, she was older and didn't have to go to bed so early. As a compromise the adults told her I could stay up and we could play games or talk quietly but not disturb the others.

What we did was angle ourselves so we could peep at the adults. While I found them only interesting when someone swore or fought Caroline was much more adept at reading the room.

"Julia and Rob are fighting." She called all adults by their first names, something I mimicked once and was immediately disciplined by my mother for.

"Are not!" I'd retorted. "They aren't even near each other."

"Exactly. Watch how when Rob says something Julia looks like she smelled bad milk."

She was right.

"What about my parents?"

My father sat on the floor, my mother occupied a chair directly behind him. She scratched at his neck or tousled his hair from time to time. When he said something that made everyone laugh, including her she batted him lightly on the shoulder.

"Your parents have a lot of sex." She surmised.

"What?"

I knew sex was...something. It was like a dirty thing that older kids alluded to but the mechanics were lost to me, as was why adults as innocent as my parents might have anything to do with it.

"Sure, first she's pregnant, and they're always touching and kissing. Only people in the movies kiss as much as your parents, and those people are always having sex."

She said this with such authority I had to ask, "What does Mom being pregnant have to do with anything?"

Then I was made privy to the answer to the big grown up secret, 'where do babies come from?'.

Being 12 Caroline had too much information and no sense of her audience. She spared no detail and by the end I was in tears, there was no way my parents did THAT, she was making that up. No one in their right mind would do that.

She told me I could believe her or not but it was true and we went back to watching the adults, me now in a resentful silence.

The next day Dad was working, Marsh was at his dirt pile and the little ones were with Mabel's nanny. Mom asked where Caroline was and I said I didn't care. She was a liar who told gross stories and I didn't want to play with her anymore.

Mom being mom couldn't leave it at that and pressed an explanation until I told her what Caroline said through tears.

We were sitting at the kitchen table and she reached over and touched my arm.

"Tonks, she didn't lie. It wasn't appropriate for her to tell you those things and some of the details are wrong (no one pees inside anyone) but yes, sex is when two people who love each other are intimate in a physical way and that is how babies are made."

"But it's so gross!" I was angry at her now and Dad for being a part of this disgusting act.

"No, not when two people love each other. Your father is the love of my life and sharing something like that with him is like kissing or holding hands, it's beautiful and caring and it brings us closer together. When you are older you'll understand better but for now I want you to keep this information to yourself, not because it's bad but because it is hard to understand when you are young."

I said I would but felt only marginally better about the whole idea.

I have to admit, I looked at my father differently after that. He was a boyish man, and remains so in the most delightful ways. At the time he would rough house with his friends and throw his own body about with reckless abandon but with my mother he was always careful and tender.

I had once seen him put her over his shoulder and carry her, protesting at the top of her lungs, into the ocean but even then when the waves crashed around them he held onto her like she might be carried away forever should he let go and they came out laughing, their arms around each other.

Beyond that moment I had witnessed only softness between them in their touch.

Now though, I imagined the violation sex seemed to me and became a little frightened of who he might be late at night.

About a month after I received my inaugural sex talk the family went to a small restaurant in a village near our house. After dinner the owner asked my father to sit at the piano and sing a song or two. This happened with some frequency no matter where in the world we turned up and after some warming up my father almost always agreed.

This particular night was the anniversary of the night my father had proposed to my mother and while some couples might choose to celebrate that alone my parents were of the mindset that we children were nothing if not living, breathing proof of their adoration for each other.

Dad sang a few songs we'd heard roughly as many times as we'd heard our own names to a small but extremely encouraging audience of mostly older local couples.

After running through his standard fare he begged the indulgence of the room (this is how my father talks, he is polite in a way that can occasionally seem condescending) and announced that it was a very special night for out little brood, "It was 9 years ago this very evening the beautiful vision of a girl you see at my table, the reason my heart beats, and the bearer of the most precious gifts I have ever been given, those 3.5 children over there, agreed to be my wife." He paused here as the patrons of the restaurant applauded and raised their glasses in a salute.

"I'd like to sing something new, something no one, including my bride has heard before and dedicate it to Isabelle, without whom I would not know how to take a single breath."

With this he launched into a song, one you likely know by now as "Open". At the time I didn't understand most of the references but I did understand the change of the air of the room.

Couples who had previously seemed bored with each other's company moved closer to each other, placing their arms around each other, holding hands, gazing at each other with sweet smiles.

Tears streaked my mothers face and she patted her belly. She mouthed "I love you" to my father, whose face was also wet with tears.

When the song was finished he asked her to join him for a song.

As much as my mother taught people to sing, and therefor hit occasional notes or trilled short sections of music we rarely heard her sing an entire song, and other than once in awhile singing along with the radio in the car, or in groups around the beach fires we had never heard her sing with my father.

She went to the piano, something none of us expected, and sat beside him. Together they sang some love song I don't remember the name of.

My father has never sounded as good as when his voice has my mother's as it's partner. As I listened to that song I cried myself, not really knowing why, but after that I never thought ugly thoughts about my parents and sex again. I understood as I heard their voices together that nothing they could ever do together was scary or awful but filled with love.


	5. Chapter 5 Loss

We returned to the States to a home that had been modified in our absence.

We lived in a beach house that was beautiful. Everything about the house was well thought out, colors and themes flowed from one room to the next, somehow leaving each room with its own distinct personality but also feeling directly related to the others around it.

It wasn't a huge mansion, I had school friends who's parents had ostentatious compounds instead of homes. They always made me feel like they were designed so the people in them would never have to see each other.

This is not to say we had some tiny beach shack, our place was one of the more expensive homes on a stretch of very exclusive beach, I'm not bragging here, just trying to give you a sense of how it was. There's no point in my bragging, it wasn't mine, I had nothing to do with it.

Before this Marsh and I had shared one huge room right next toy parents and Alex had been in the room she'd had since infancy across the hall.

When we came home walls had been knocked out and new ones put up. Marshall had his own room, Alex had hers, I, thank God, had mine. Alex's old room remained a nursery for the baby we were all getting more and more excited to meet.

Mom was getting really big and her hair was getting so long, she looked like she'd been blown up like a balloon making her bloated and pushing all of the hair that was previously inside outward.

She was a happy pregnant lady, I never remember my mother complaining of swollen ankles or nausea although both were demonstrably and monstrously present.

Alex and I were obsessed with feeling the baby kick and squirm. Marsh declined whenever he was offered a feel. I think he found it a distinctly female event and wanted to distance himself.

My parents who had known the sex of all of is pre-birth had chosen to be surprised this time so my dad took to calling bambino dolce and eventually we all just started call the kid Dolce.

It wouldn't matter what she, or he, would be named, much like I would always be Tonks, this one would always be Dolce.

She was about six weeks outside of her due date and Dad was away doing a one night performance in Michigan with some friends to benefit his old college.

Uncle's Chris and Will were visiting, finally back from their stay in Paris.

I'm told that after we kids went to bed Mom told the uncles she was worried. Dolce had stopped moving as much as before and she hadn't had a kick or felt a flip in a day or two. It was decided they would spend the night and in the morning Will would stay with us and Chris would take Mom to the doctor to ease her mind.

When we woke up a Will had made chocolate chip pancakes and was creating faces on them with fruit. Mom and Uncle Chris had gone to run an errand we'd been told, we'll meet them later with the dogs.

We often took our dogs and theirs to a park where they could romp together. There was a hiking trail around it the uncles would do, sometimes bringing us kids to get us kids to get us out of mom and dad's hair for a bit.

Half way through breakfast while Alex and Uncle Will rolled a cherry between them claiming it to be the eyeball of the final pancake Uncle Will's phone rang.

He answered it happily "Hello Chip!" He called Uncle Chris 'Chip', Uncle Chris called Will 'Dale'. I was told it was after tie cartoon characters from Disney that were chipmunks but no further explanation was ever requested or offered.

Uncle Will's face fell and the musical playfulness left his voice. "Oh God...What can I do?"

He hung up the phone a few minutes later and turned back to us, raising his voice back up to a "hey kids it's fun time" voice. "Mom and Uncle Chris are running late so we're gonna take the dogs out by ourselves." He had Marsh round up the animals and we all bundled into his Escalade.

Usually at the park Uncle Will would play with the dogs, throwing frisbees or balls for them but this day he sat on a bench and texted on his phone nonstop.

We went back to the house and I helped Will pack some bags because we were going to sleepover at their house.

No one thought to question this, we were nomads, moving our little caravan from place to place according to my fathers jobs or my parents whims. They rarely left us with anyone else for more than a week but overnights were as common as grains of sand.

The thing was we had so many "aunts and uncles" both of the related and unrelated variety there was always someone having a party, or wanting to take us to a carnival or any number of things.

Uncle Chris didn't come home until much later and when he did Dad was with him.

This was confusing. Dad took us all into the tv room, his eyes were red and puffy. We knew something was wrong but being kids we didn't even guess at the truth.

He let us know that Mom had lost the baby. Alex wanted to know where.

I now know that the baby had simply died, there was no further explanation. It happens sometimes for no reason they told my parents.

They took her by C section and let them hold her.

We had a funeral mass for her. After much debate our parents decided we should attend. We weren't church goers really, except when we'd go stay with our grandparents.

It was pouring rain and thundering loudly as we emerged from the limo and slowly made our way behind the tiny casket into the church.

The smell of incense and flowers nearly knocked me back out the door. It was a heavy scent that choked the back of my throat. I thought it was the smell of death, I pictured her little body rotting in the box, imagined it was her flesh I smelled. It was all I could do to not vomit.

Alex was afraid, I'm not sure if it was the storm or the dead baby or the fact that my parents felt like strangers, empty shells made to look like tired, slightly off brand versions of the real thing.

Marsh and I stood on either side of her, our arms linked through hers following our broken parents down the aisle.

We sat next to Dad, leaving him close to Mom to comfort her. Scriptures were read, songs were sung, our entire extended family surrounded us.

The church felt like a safe haven from the storm, both the one outside and the one our family was weathering. It was impossible to think how life would continue when we left this place.

When Alex became inconsolable my father tugged her across me to sit in his lap and be cradled. I envied her youth, not so far removed from my own but far enough that I would be expected to be a "big girl through moments such as this.

When the mass ended everyone stopped in the entry way of the church to hug my parents with words of conciliation. We were hugged too, Marsh and I being told over and over to behave for our parents and not give them anything more to worry about.

Alex was shuffled away by Uncle Joey and we were settled into a car with Uncle Chuck and Aunt Lucy. Aunt Lucy was expecting a baby of her own and this was a terrible experience for her.

She cried while Uncle Chuck drove, trying to calm her down for everyone's sake.

We entered the gates if the cemetery, a place Marsh and I had never been, but we'd been told by Mom and Dad what to expect and asked if we wanted to attend. We did.

Marsh and I both felt Dolce was more one of us than one of them. She belonged, after all among our ranks, we had made room for her both physically and emotionally.

Most of us had. Years later, in our teens when left alone over night Alex and I got into Mom and Dad's alcohol and sat on the deck of the beach house watching the moonlight on the water.

"I always blamed myself for Mom losing that baby."

"Dolce?" I didn't ask because Mom had lost more than one of us, I just wanted to say her name out loud. No one had in so long.

"Yeah. Dolce." She repeated it, I guessed for the same reason I'd said it. She stretched her legs out and pointed her toes, taking a long sip of wine.

"I hated the thought of not being the baby anymore so every time I put my hand on Mom's belly to feel her kick I'd think in my head how some day I was gonna kick her back so hard."

Alex started to cry. "I mean I know obviously that I was a kid and I didn't kill her but I always think like, what if God took her because I didn't deserve to be a big sister?"

I had to laugh, "Alex you have 2 little sisters and a little brother, and you're a fantastic big sister."

"I learned from the best." She nudged my leg with hers.

"I hated you when you were born." I offered after a few more sips of wine.

"Because you wanted to be the baby?"

"Because Mom and Dad sent us away for the first six weeks after you were born. I thought they didn't want us anymore now that they had you."

She asked if I ever felt like half of a person because I rarely say "me" or "I" instead speaking in terms of "us" and "we".

I told her it felt selfish to claim a memory or experience as my own when it belonged to Marsh just as much.

But Alex didn't get to choose whether she would experience the graveyard.

The thunder had stopped but the pelting rain continued. There were black umbrellas everywhere so the rain made a comforting pattering noise against the plastic. This is what I concentrated on instead if the words being said or the big muddy hole in the ground where my sister would soon be buried forever.

The house was filled with people for the next few days. Mom took me out one afternoon just to get away for awhile. She asked me how I was doing with all of it and I told her I wished everyone would go home and leave us alone.

Mom lit up. She said she knew they were trying to help but all they were was a constant reminder that something was wrong.

She told me how much all of us meant to her and how different her life was from what she had expected. When I asked what she meant by this she looked sad.

"Before I met your father I was very successful but very, very lonely. I never thought I would get married or have a family."

"But Daddy changed all that?"

"Daddy changed everything." She thought about this a minute and added, "You don't need a man to rescue you, but when you find someone as special as your father you realize you could want something completely new."

I told her I wished I could marry someone exactly like Daddy and she said she hoped the same thing because men like him where rare and she was the luckiest woman in the world.

It was nice, having this girl time with Mom, leaving behind the cloud of loss that hung over our home. She didn't look now like a mother who just lost her child, she looked like a teenager in love.


	6. Taking It On The Road

Taking It on the Road

I can remember going into my parents room in the middle if the night. Dad was away on tour and I'd had a bad dream. I crawled into bed with Mom expecting a warm and safe embrace but finding instead a wet pillow, my mother sniffling. When I asked why she was crying she said she missed Daddy. I didn't know grown ups missed each other that way but I realized then that my parents were two halves of the same whole and ripping them apart was physically painful for them.

When he came home we all ran to him, waiting our turns to be picked up, hugged, covered in kisses and assured that yes, he brought us presents.

Mom stayed back allowing us to gather at his feet like excited puppies barking up questions about where he went and what he'd seen. He gave us all of the attention he could muster before holding his arms out to Mom. She leapt into them, him lifting her as easily as he had us. He kissed her over and over.

Every Darren Criss tour after that one we travelled as a family.

My parents owned their own tour bus which was more like a double decker mobile home complete with two kitchens.

They had a bedroom upstairs with a huge living room and full kitchen and bathroom. On the first floor was a smaller bedroom, another living room, another bathroom, a small studio and a small office.

When we were little we slept in the upstairs living room but as we got older we moved downstairs. It settled itself out that the living and bedroom downstairs became kid central and the the upstairs a haven of solitude for my parents.

I loved the bus. It had a curling, iron staircase from one floor to another and I could lock myself in the office and curl up in the huge leather recliner and watch tv or DVDs without the others fighting over the remote.

I could also read in there. My father says I was born with a Kindle in my hand. I lived books about little girl witches the most.

I loved mornings on the bus. At home both of my parents would get dressed before breakfast, not dressed up, but clothing that would be appropriate for leaving the house should the need arise.

They would look at least halfway put together, hair tamed if not really 'done', that sort of thing.

On tour though we ate breakfast upstairs, probably 20 feet from their bedroom. It was like camping or something, we were Bohemia on wheels.

My mother would come to breakfast in tiny nightshirts and her hair in a ponytail on the top of her head. She was cute and casual.

My father though.

I mentioned my father's effect on women. I used to think if they saw him cooking eggs on the bus they'd all knock it off and find someone else to swoon over.

We would come upstairs regularly to find my father in the kitchen wearing drooping old boxers that sat low on his hips, sometimes this would be paired with a white, short sleeve, V-neck t shirts. With or without the shirt there would be a full view of thick, dark chest hair.

It was like having breakfast with a yeti. He almost never shaved on tour so the longer we were on the road the thicker and wilder his beard would grow. He wouldn't get hair cuts either so it was as if all of the hair on his body was slowly spreading like a killing vine, taking over every possible spec of real estate until my father became a pile of hair with a nose and two eyes behind glasses.

I loved this and so did Mom. This casual, rock and roll version of my father would laze around all morning playing games with us, he never had to rush off to another place, movie set, TV set, studio, interviews, none of it. There was lots to be done but most everything was scheduled for after 4 pm, the bus was normally rolling until then and as long as it was our parents were our captives.

The bus always felt like a bubble. Like a piece of home that broke off and surrounded us as we moved around the country.

When Dad would do his shows we would only go for the first few songs and even that we only did once in a while.

In the beginning it was exciting to see him up there with his friends, hanging out and jamming just like at home only with a room full of screaming girls watching.

It was a little hard to understand the screaming, and the crying. I hate the crying. I'd ask why they screamed, if they were so excited to see Dad and hear him sing, why didn't they listen? What was the point of the noise?

Sometimes Dad would trot us out and have us sing with him. It could be fun, but usually we would be in a hurry to get out of there.

Mom would research every town we were going to and plan something fun for us to do while Dad was on stage.

There were amusement parks, museums, cool diners with singing waiters and planetariums. We would go see the worlds biggest anything. We have pictures of us kids in front of the worlds biggest ball of razor wire, bottle cap collection, gigantic shark statues from nearly every state you name it. As a group we loved kitsch.

After exhausting the giant theme we moved on to finding restaurants in oddly shaped buildings. You'd be amazed how many restaurants and fruit stands are shaped like oranges.

We had fried clams from a giant clam box shaped building in Massachusetts, hot dogs from a walk through hot dog just outside Denver, in Dallas there was a McDonalds shaped and painted like an enormous Happy Meal.

I wanted to go to every zoo possible, Marsh liked anywhere with rides, Alex wanted to ice skate. When the little ones came they developed their own preferences. Kai, who was born the year we spent mostly in Hawaii looked for anything to make her feel like a princess, castles, costume shops, Crush who's real name is Hayden took to surfing like was born on a board and learned to play the drums with finesse early on, there was a lot of pots and pans with dents in his wake. Hailey, the baby, wanted speed, she loved the wind in her hair. Hailey also had an innate musicality and mastered any instrument you handed her. She would listen to music my father was writing and tell him exactly why it wasn't working, how to change a note just so and it would all come together.

Of course we fought like cats and dogs but we were tight knit and mostly happy in each other's company.

Late at night when I couldn't sleep I would climb the curving stairs to the upper floor of the bus and find my father. We would sit, me on his lap, or later between his outstretched legs and watch the world go by our window.

Dad called them "drive-by movies" instead of drive in movies. We would just watch the lights and the cars until something struck our fancy, then we would tell each other elaborate stories about what we'd seen.

Truck stops and all night restaurants would keep us going for hours. We'd imagine the lives of the long haul truckers, what they carried in their massive 18 wheelers and who they had waiting for them at home. We would invent couples on their honeymoons, lonely businessmen selling highlighters and staples on the road in competition with the big box stores.

There would be tired mothers with cranky kids who were driving all night to get to see her parents and needed a cup of coffee to keep them awake and teens who were running away from home.

Dad always said I should write the stories down, keep them for a book when I was older as Uncle Chris had done but I knew I could write new stories then, these were private, just for Dad and Me.

Somehow each of us got private attention from our parents despite the crazy schedules our family kept.

It wasn't until after Mom lost Dolce that she "returned to work".

She'd been asked to come in and polish a stage show for a female singer who was known for surrounding herself in concert with a well choreographed league of dancers and back up singers.

I had seen her on television and knew her name. I knew my father was sometimes on tv, and had gone to his concerts but they were much more low key affairs, more of an extension of nights around the fire on the beach at home.

The woman was a star, a capital S star. Dad brought Marsh, Alex and I to visit Mom at the rehearsal space where we sat in the back row of the floor seats and watched.

My formally frail and gentle mother barked orders and basically lost her shit on anyone who wasn't treating the rehearsal like boot camp including the famous lady who fell in line as quickly as the lighting guy.

I was in awe. My mother was commanding, vibrant and almost manic. She could show each dancer the steps they were meant to be doing perfectly, she could hit every note she asked others to hit, and she seemed to see tiny imperfections no one else had noticed.

When she had a break and the five of us had dinner together I asked her why she didn't do her own concerts. She was better than anyone else on the stage, why not do the show herself?

She explained that she never wanted to be the center of attention but I couldn't believe her when she seemed always to be exactly that.

Being on the road when Mom was touring was very different. Dad would treat his shows as a "show up, sit down, see what happens" sort of affair, which meant he was 98% stress free before and after shows.

Mom on the other hand worked for people who had a traveling circus vibe. There were usually anywhere from 2 to 5 busses not including ours and a convoys if tractor trailer trucks with equipment, sets, special flooring, costumes and merchandise.

Mom made every molecule of the tour her business. Sound boards, lighting fixtures, every but and bolt in the set was examined, every costume checked, every tee shirt and souvenir magnet accounted for before the doors could open.

She would coach each voice personally, pushing one persons shoulders down, sticking her fingers into the mouth of another.

During the shows she sat in a different place each night and took pages of notes, things that no one would notice on their own but once corrected out a new shine on the next performance.

Sleeping was out of the question. Eating was a necessary evil. We were...not in the way exactly, but an added pressure.

Mom became the psychologist of the tour. People would ride our bus and cry to her, "Oh Issey, you're so lucky you can bring your family with you, I miss my kids so much."

"Issey he said my hair looked good like this, do you think he was coming on to me or do you think it means he's gay?"

"Issey if I don't get a bump, just a little bump I don't think I can go on tonight." "Goddamn it Issey if he's high on stage again tonight I'm gonna shoot him in the balls while he sleeps."

None of this got to her. She could listen to other people's rants and dry their tears day in and say out. The only times she got upset was when someone didn't take show time seriously or if anyone tried to get too close to us kids.

We were off limits. Not just to the junkies in the bands but to everyone, hairdressers, roadies, talent, it didn't matter. She and Dad kept us in our own lite bubble where they knew we were safe.

Dad would come when he could and if he couldn't because he was working himself he would fly out to meet us as much as possible. As we got older we'd split, some preferring life on the road, others choosing to stay home, or on location with Dad.

If he was going to be in New York I begged to stay with him.


End file.
